What are the Cheapest Days to Fly? Pro Tips to Save Money on Air Travel

Air travel can be a big expense on any trip, so if you can learn how to save money on flights that you take, you can make the total cost of traveling far more affordable. There are lots of different tricks to lower the costs of airfare, but one of the key things to consider is that there are certain times when you can travel when a ticket will cost far less than it would on an alternative date.

Knowing the cheapest days to fly will allow you to strategically schedule your trips on days when you can get the lowest price tickets so you’ll have more money to spend on fun stuff once you arrive at your destination. Find out when you should fly to get the maximum in savings.

What are the Cheapest Days to Fly?

The cheapest days to fly will vary depending upon your destination, but generally the goal is to fly at times where the demand is lower so airlines put tickets on sale in order to entice travelers to buy seats.

If the trip that you are taking requires you to fly domestically within the United States, the days with the fewest flyers– and thus the cheapest flights — are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.

You could save as much as 10 to 40 percent off the cost of an airline ticket if you fly within the United States on a Tuesday, Wednesday or a Saturday, compared with if you made the same trip on Sunday, Monday, or Friday when there are more travelers. Thursday is a day with a moderate number of travelers– more travelers than on the cheapest days and fewer travelers than on the expensive days – so the pricing falls in between the lowest and highest price tickets for domestic travel.

If you are going to be taking a trans-Atlantic trip, Monday through Thursday are the cheapest days to fly, so you’ll want to focus on booking on these days of the week if you’re looking for tips on how to save money on flights. However, the savings on international flights that comes from traveling on low price days is only around five percent when compared with Friday, Saturday and Sunday international flight costs so you won’t get to enjoy that 40 percent savings that comes with flying domestic.

How to Save Money on Flights by Choosing the Cheapest Days to Fly

It’s a good idea to try to time both your national and trans-Atlantic trips so you can fly on the cheapest days of the week, especially if you are making a trip within the United States and can realize substantial savings just for leaving on a strategic traveling day. However, if you are not able to travel both to your destination and home from your destination on one of the preferred days, you can at least try to ensure either that your inbound flight or your outbound flight is scheduled on one of the low price days. At least if you are able to travel one way on a low-price day, you’ll benefit from half the savings.

To make sure you’re finding the best deals on these cheap flights, you should also try to buy your ticket at a specific time and on a specific day of the week: specifically, you should try to buy a cheap airline ticket at around 3:00 PM on a Tuesday afternoon. Airlines typically put fares on sale on a Monday afternoon and send their discounted pricing to travel websites on Monday, along with posting the low prices on their own website. When competitors wake up on Tuesday morning, they can see all of the sales that were posted the day before. They will typically adjust their prices in accordance with other sales. By 3:00 PM on Tuesday, the final sale pricing from these different airlines will go live in their flight reservation system, which means that the maximum number of low-priced seats will be available at that time.

When you buy your ticket on any day, often you have the option of checking ‘Flexible Dates,” or of checking a box with similar language. If you have flexible dates, you can compare the prices if you fly on one day versus another. Many airlines have calendars that you can use to see the lowest fares on each of the days surrounding your proposed departure and proposed arrival time. These calendars can be helpful by showing how much of a premium you pay to travel on poplar days so you can make an informed choice and get the airline ticket that works for you.

With all of these great tips for finding the cheapest days to fly, you could save a ton of money on your next flight!